We showed up, with a great reception. I was watching and listening, and only heard one stupid comment, which I’d anticipated – it was a “turn that flag around” or some such, and I’d posted a sign below the flags (one on each side of the truck) “DISTRESS U.S. Flag Code 4 U.S.C. 8(a).” DOH!

Special thanks to Alan Muller to helping with logistics, and Bitsy Joy for motivation and banners and more! Thanks to Ceri Everett for photos & videos:

Let’s see… Xcel invites so many from the City that there may be “a quorum of all Red Wing Boards & Commissions members and City Council members.” It’s obviously a lobbying shindig, THREE HOURS LONG. I’m guessing it’s the current rendition of their “Community Breakfast.”

Oh, we tried! Alan Muller and I went, and they wouldn’t let us in, because we were not invited. (Also turns out my Birkenstocks and Alan’s shorts are not allowed — if we’d been invited, guess that’s in the email.) The woman at the desk made a LOT of calls, left many messages, so quite a few Xcel employees are aware we were there wanting to be admitted.

Look who was there — turns out it wasn’t “just” Red Wing, but Goodhue County too! “My” District 1 County Commissioner is there, as well as the Land Use Management Director.

City says “all Red Wing Boards and Commissions.” I’m on Red Wing’s Charter Commission… and I see Goodhue County folks there, and I’m on Goodhue County’s Planning Commission. First I heard of this was the “Notice of Quorum” above.

This Xcel Energy “Private Event” was not announced at Monday’s City Council meeting, but there was an announcement of the Sturgeon Lake Road Overpass Ribbon Cutting to be held July 31, 2025, the day after the PINGP secret private “Plant Tour” three hour meeting!

Who was invited?? Who was not!!! SNORT! Who decides?

Why is this lobbying meeting held in private, on a site with attendance severely restricted with a gate and guards (I should note that at the gate, the two security guys had BIG guns). Shouldn’t it be open to the public? What are they saying and doing that they don’t want public?

Official business? There are Xcel issues on the City’s agenda so often, like their extortion of responsibility for the emergency sirens; request for additional dry casks; Integrated Resource Plan; the LATE PUC comment with watered down language… It’s likely no specific agenda item, pending or past, was discussed, but it’s easy to do umbrella lobbying about nuclear power, additional casks, and “need” for generation.

Does this pass the smell test for local officials of Minn. Stat. 471.895?

It’s been a long time since I attended the annual Xcel Energy community breakfast… SEVENTEEN YEARS!

Breakfast on Xcel May 14th, 2008

Today’s meeting will be over soon — better get this posted!!

Incompetence is as incompetence does… Punishment and retribution for outing Trump administration’s behavior and practice? It’s way too familiar. More on that later.

Here’s what “Attorney General” Pam Bambi had her staff do at “her direction,” filed yesterday:

Read the Misconduct Complaint against Judge Boasberg below — OMFD! Judge Boasberg speaks the truth — “the Trump Administration would “disregard rulings of federal courts” and trigger “a constitutional crisis.” The Trump Administration would, and HAS, admitted that they’d ignore court orders. Ask Emil Bove!

... Bove said to a group in a March meeting to ignore the court orders or they "would hamper Trump's efforts to deport millions of undocumented immigrants."

And in HuffPost (and Emil Bove “is deputy attorney general and one of Trump’s court picks”):

This is obscene.

After this administration goes the way of the brontosaurus, I can just imagine what the rest of her life will be like.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, the Complaint of Erez Reuveni, with some documentation of disregard of court orders and retribution against him:

Power outages all over Xcel territory. It was at 66k when I first looked, now we’re at 52k. That’s a LOT. Even Frontenac State Park is out and trees down.

Red Wing isn’t too bad, and they’re getting folks back online.

Keep an eye on the MISO LMP map here: https://api.misoenergy.org/MISORTWD/lmpcontourmap.html

Right now at high noon, reflecting the many power outages:

This letter below from the U.S. Department of Justice to Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon has been sitting on my screen for a while — it’s important stuff, and more important, it’s not only Minnesota.

UPDATE: MN’s SoS Steve Simon’s response.

Secretary of State Steve Simon to feds: Nah

Bottom line:

Although some of these letters were sent some time ago, mid-May, and others in June, I’ve noticed concern about them is just now surfacing in establishment media. ??? This is important, DOH! DoJ is going after voter files in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, here in Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin – available letters are linked below.

The letters, this DoJ effort, ostensibly grew from Executive Order 14248, PRESERVING AND PROTECTING THE INTEGRITY OF AMERICAN ELECTIONS, issued March 25, 2025. The false notion is that elections are tainted, corrupt, fraudulent:

Free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion are fundamental to maintaining our constitutional Republic. The right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election.

EO 14248 in its entirety:

Nevermind that voter fraud is essentially non-existent, errors are as rare, and suspicion is a product of intense Trumpism blathering lies… well, except for Jake’s voter registration fraud! Voter fraudsters caught are a majority Republican! Voter fraud surfaces in Iowa, Florida and Texas October 30th, 2016. As important is that those voting twice, voting when ineligible, fraudulent registrations, they’re usually CAUGHT! There is no epidemic of voter fraud or voter registration fraud. Here’s a Minnesota example of voter registration fraud, CAUGHT! “No fraudulent ballots were requested or cast in connection with the case.”

What this hysteria does is support efforts to restrict voting, to put higher bars to registration and voting, but enacting heightened proof of citizenship (non-citizens aren’t voting, it’s a non-issue); making registration much more difficult by requiring documentation that’s hard to get; counting of provisional ballots; restricting and eliminating voting by mail; tightening “spoilation” remedies; reduction of polling places and reducing staff creating long, long lines, etc. It’s all anti-democracy (with a small “d”) at its core. And that’s what Project 2025 is all about.

Project 2025_Mandate For Leadership statement regarding voting:

Justice Department’s early moves on voting and elections signal a shift from its traditional role

From the article, “…no evidence of fraud.” DOH!

Multiple reviews in the presidential battleground states affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win in 2020, Trump and his allies lost dozens of lawsuits, and even Trump’s attorney general at the time said there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

The “shift from its traditional role” change from Civil Rights to Criminal division means that the focus is not on voting rights, but on limitations and searching for non-existent violations of registration and voting laws. Oh well… onward they go, wasting time and resources, but they’d not regard efforts to limit voting as a waste.

Here are some of the DoJ letters to states — Democracy Docket has done a good job of getting them: